narc0tic_bird

narc0tic_bird , 19 hours ago

Show 'em, that’ll teach these nasty fanboys! Reads like writing that got you a big dopamine rush.

I agree, commenting “Use Firefox!!!1!11” on every post remotely related to (other) browsers doesn’t help anybody, just like commenting “Use Linux!!!1!11” on every post about a vulnerability in Windows doesn’t contribute anything meaningful at all.

Look, I also disagree with what Mozilla is doing here and yes, they 100% deserve the flak they are getting for it. But - like most things in life - it’s not black and white. Firefox could still be less intrusive to your privacy than Chrome (I’m not saying it necessarily is, but it could be that way). A different example: your mail provider could track every time you login to your account, or it could analyze and track the content of every email you receive. One is clearly worse than the other, right?

Which browser(s) do you recommend/use?

narc0tic_bird , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

iOS/iPadOS: Safari + AdGuard (+ Vinegar (optional))

macOS: Safari + AdGuard or Firefox + uBO or FreeTube

narc0tic_bird , 1 day ago

There is no definitive roadmap.

narc0tic_bird , 2 days ago

Let’s see if this really affects all Linux systems or if the stars need to align for this to actually be exploitable.

narc0tic_bird , 3 days ago

Larian Studios

And Naughty Dog during the PS3 era.

narc0tic_bird , 3 days ago

Great games as well, but I was mostly playing on PC during the PS2 era. Loved their original Crash Bandicoot games as well. But Uncharted and also The Last of Us was pretty special to me.

narc0tic_bird , 4 days ago

Had that happen yesterday for the first time with a similar (AMD CPU and GPU) setup.

narc0tic_bird , 4 days ago

Didn’t happen again so far, so I didn’t investigate further. The qcode display on my mainboard displayed an error code I think.

narc0tic_bird , 9 days ago

x86/x64 code is pretty much 100% compatible between AMD and Intel. On the GPU side it’s not that simple but Sony would’ve “just” had to port over their GNM(X) graphics APIs to Intel (Arc, presumably). Just like most PC games work completely fine and in the same way between Nvidia, AMD and Intel GPUs. But they have to do that anyway to some extent even with newer GPU architectures from AMD, because PS4’s GCN isn’t 1:1 compatible to PS5’s RDNA2 on an architectural level, and the PS4’s Jaguar CPU isn’t even close to PS5’s Zen 2.

Other than that, you’re right. Sony wouldn’t switch to Intel unless they got a way better chip and/or way better deal, and I don’t think Intel was ready with a competitive GPU architecture back when the PS5’s specifications were set in stone.

narc0tic_bird , 10 days ago

Unfortunately, a lot of those are super popular and there are still gamers that don’t want to switch to Linux but can’t because of those games.

FTFY because of course most of these people could switch and just stop playing these couple of games, that’s hardly life changing.

narc0tic_bird , 9 days ago

Downvote all you want, but that’s how it is. People prioritize certain things over others - and that’s completely fine - but don’t pretend like they don’t have a choice. On the contrary, more people switching to a Linux distribution despite incompatible games would lead to these games more likely adopting Linux compatibility.

narc0tic_bird , 8 days ago

Whether free will exists or not would add a whole new layer to this discussion that you could easily add to almost any discussion as a wildcard. If we assume that using Windows vs Linux is predetermined as opposed to being a choice, this whole comment tree doesn’t make any sense. So let’s not go there.

In my opinion, if quitting playing a couple of games really is life changing to you, you have deeper problems. If your so-called friends can’t understand why you quit a game over something that’s more important (to you), then find different people who do. That’s almost as stupid as American kids excluding other kids for not using iMessage/iPhone. Doesn’t mean your friends have to stop playing these games, but you can share other moments with them. Other games, conversations, other activities altogether.

narc0tic_bird , 12 days ago

I’m not sure how that would help in letting lost people go.

narc0tic_bird , 13 days ago

How do you not do that? It’s all in your local network, how would it not work offline…?

narc0tic_bird , 14 days ago

Except that in every other generation the console actually got a lot cheaper after a couple of years.

narc0tic_bird , 15 days ago

Replace the 3060 with an equally-priced AMD card and you’ll actually get something decent for your money. Nvidia is horrible at these “lower” price points.

narc0tic_bird , 16 days ago

Yes, it’s a bug in KDE Plasma that might be fixed with 6.2: bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487780

narc0tic_bird , 17 days ago

It is, but then again many (most) are hosted on GitHub.

narc0tic_bird , 21 days ago

Catppuccin Latte works well too!

narc0tic_bird , 21 days ago

Yeah, duplicate flags should just be ignored.

narc0tic_bird , 22 days ago

To be fair, a big portion of the work that goes into Linux (at least the kernel) is done by paid developers working for big corporations.

narc0tic_bird , 22 days ago

Didn’t Nintendo even repair NES consoles up until not too long ago?

narc0tic_bird , 22 days ago

That was very cool. Almost like supercar manufacturers still servicing their very old car models (with a big price tag attached, but still).

narc0tic_bird , 24 days ago

I think it’s mostly supply/demand.

Most people are satisfied with how games are acquired commercially. Steam’s DRM system is usually received well. There are outliers using different launchers (sometimes on top of Steam) or games using Denuvo, but most customers are satisfied with how Steam handles it, and it also adds valuable features like cloud saves (so for example when you have a desktop PC and a Steam Deck resuming where you left off is pretty seamless) and Valve didn’t have any major fuckups yet (not that I remember anyway). It works, it’s convenient and most people can afford it.

Similar thing with music: streaming services work well for the most part and have almost all the music most people would want. They’re pretty affordable and convenient.

With movies and TV shows most people were satisfied when Netflix got rolling as it was pretty much the only streaming service you “needed”. Nowadays more and more services emerge with their own exclusive content and pricing is increased on a regular basis, sometimes multiple times per year. That’s why (from my perspective at least) piracy increases in that sector. It’s no longer affordable and no longer convenient.

As for software, I think most people exclusively use free-to-use software anyway. Software from the Adobe suite still gets pirated a lot, I know no one who paid for Adobe software for personal use.

narc0tic_bird , 25 days ago

That’s why it’s there.

narc0tic_bird , 25 days ago

Considering Intel is behind TSMC as well, China might be quite close to Intel then.

narc0tic_bird , 25 days ago

More than enough for Apple to bend to pretty much everything the Chinese government is asking for.

narc0tic_bird , 27 days ago

Even if all of that worked, why would I want it?

narc0tic_bird , 26 days ago

Article from JUNE 14, 2022

narc0tic_bird , 28 days ago

See if you can find a (used) GPD Win (Max).

Otherwise maybe a used (~2016) 12" MacBook.

Other than that maybe some DIY solutions.

It’ll be cheaper if the device can be a little bigger, plenty of dirt cheap used 13" laptops out there.

narc0tic_bird , 29 days ago

What you’re describing as “DisplayPort alt mode” is DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (MST). Alt mode is the ability to pass native DisplayPort stream(s) via USB-C, which all M chip Macs are capable of. MST is indeed unsupported by M chip hardware, and it’s not supported in macOS either way - even the Intel Macs don’t support it even though the hardware is capable of it.

MST is nice for a dual WQHD setup or something (or dual UHD@60 with DisplayPort 1.4), but attempt to drive multiple (very) high resolution and refresh rate displays and you’ll be starved for bandwidth very quickly. Daisy-chaining 6 displays might technically be possible with MST, but each of them would need to be set to a fairly low resolution for today’s standards. Macs that support more than one external display can support two independent/full DisplayPort 1.4 signals per Thunderbolt port (as per the Thunderbolt 4 spec), so with a proper Thunderbolt hub you can connect two high resolution displays via one port no problem.

I agree that even base M chips should support at least 3 simultaneous displays (one internal and two external, or 3 external in clamshell mode), and they should add MST support for the convenience to be able to connect to USB-C hubs using MST with two (lower-resolution) monitors, and support proper sub-pixel font anti-aliasing on these low-DPI displays (which macOS was perfectly capable of in the past, but they removed it). Just for the convenience of being able to use any random hub you stumble across and it “just works”, not because it’s necessarily ideal.

But your comparison is blown way out of proportion. “Max” Macs support the internal display at full resolution and refresh rate (120 Hz), 3 external 6K 60Hz displays and an additional display via HDMI (4K 144 Hz on recent models). Whatever bandwidth is left per display when daisy-chaining 6 displays to a single Thunderbolt port on a Windows machine, it won’t be anywhere near enough to drive all of them at these resolutions.

narc0tic_bird , 29 days ago

Yup, while the current iPhone 15 Pro is the only model which has 8 GB of RAM, with the regular iPhone 15 having 6 GB. All iPhone 16 models (launching next month) will still only have 8 GB according to rumors, which happens to be the bare minimum required to run Apple Intelligence.

Giving the new models only 8 GB seems a bit shortsighted and will likely mean that more complex AI models in future iOS versions won’t run on these devices. It could also mean that these devices won’t be able to keep a lot of apps ready in the background if running an AI model in-between.

16 GB is proper future-proofing on Google’s part (unless they lock new software features behind newer models anyway down the road), and Apple will likely only gradually increase memory on their devices.

narc0tic_bird , 29 days ago

I think they got caught with their pants down when everybody started doing AI and they were like “hey, we have this cool VR headset”. Otherwise they would’ve at least prepared the regular iPhone 15 (6 GB) to be ready for Apple Intelligence. Every (Apple Silicon) device with 8 GB or more get Apple Intelligence, so M1 iPads from 2021 get it as well for example, even though the M1’s NPU is much weaker than some of the NPUs in unsupported devices with less RAM.

They are launching their AI (or at least everything under the “Apple Intelligence” umbrella) with iOS 18.1 which won’t even release with the launch of the new iPhones, and it’ll be US only (or at least English only) with several of the features announced at WWDC still missing/coming later and it’s unclear how they proceed in the EU.

narc0tic_bird , 29 days ago

I’m not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me here. Either way, hardware has a substantially longer turnaround time compared to software. The iPhone 15 would’ve been in development years before release (I’m assuming they’re developing multiple generations in parallel, which is very likely the case) and keep in mind that the internals are basically identical to the iPhone 14 Pro, featuring the same SoC.

AI and maybe AAA games like Resident Evil aside, 6 GB seems to work very well on iPhones. If I had a Pixel 6/7/8 Pro with 12 GB and an iPhone 12/13/14 Pro (or 15) with 6 GB, I likely wouldn’t notice the difference unless I specifically counted the number of recent applications I could reopen without them reloading. 6 GB keeps plenty of recent apps in memory on iOS.

But I’m not sure going with 8 GB in the new models knowing that AI is a thing and the minimum requirement for their first series of models is 8 GB is too reassuring. I’m sure these devices will get 5-8 years of software updates, but new AI features might be reduced or not present at all on these models then.

When talking about “AI” in this context I’m talking about everything new under the “Apple Intelligence” umbrella, like LLMs and image generators. They’ve done what you’d call “AI” nowadays for many years on their devices, like photo analysis, computational photography, voice isolation, “Siri” recommendations etc.

narc0tic_bird , 29 days ago

I’m not generally arguing it’s not a big deal. I’m actually saying the regular M chips should be upgraded to M “Pro” levels of display support. But beyond two external displays, yes, I’m arguing it’s not a big deal, simply because >99% of users don’t want to use more than two external displays (no matter the resolution). Even if I had 6 old displays lying around I would hardly use more than two of them for a single computer. And as long as I’m not replacing all 6 displays with 6 new displays it doesn’t make a difference in terms of e-waste. On the contrary I’d use way more energy driving 6 displays simultaneously.

I’m 100% with you that MST should be supported, but not because driving six displays (per stream) is something I expect many people to do, but because existing docking solutions often use MST to provide multiple (2) DisplayPort outputs. My workplace has seats with a USB-C docking station connected to two WQHD displays via MST, and they’d all need replacing should we ever switch to MacBooks.

And sure, they should bring back proper font rendering on lower resolution displays. I personally haven’t found it to be too bad, but better would be … better, obviously. And as it already was a feature many moons ago, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

narc0tic_bird , 28 days ago

iOS used to be able to handle background tasks via very specific APIs, that started with iOS 4 and I believe this started to be reworked with iOS 7 and it behaves similar to Android in that background apps are suspended by default. According to an old video by Android Authority, iOS seems to be able to compress suspended apps down to a smaller memory footprint than Android. Both OS allow background services to run, but to my understanding iOS keeps way more control over that compared to Android (although vendor-specific battery saving features probably attempt to do something similar on Android). So in that way, it’s still more specific/selective on iOS compared to Android. Prompt (iOS SSH app) uses the location service in the background to prevent iOS eventually killing active connections for example. Still, iOS seems to handle app suspension more efficient than Android (and yes, Android actually suspends background apps as well).

I’m with you that they could’ve likely bumped all soon-to-be-released iPhone 16 models to 16 GB, but rumors only have them at 8 GB. Makes “sense”, as even the iPad Pro and MacBook Air still only come with 8 GB in their lowest configurations.

But I don’t buy that them releasing the iPhone 15 with only 6 GB of RAM was a malicious attempt at limiting AI features. Seeing how unfinished their AI stuff is even in their latest beta releases, they were/are playing catchup. It was bad foresight and there are often talks about how internal teams at Apple are very secretive about projects in development, I wouldn’t be surprised if the team developing the iPhone 15 knew pretty much nothing about the software plans with Apple Intelligence. It’s still a very valid point of criticism though obviously, seeing as you could still buy an iPhone 15 to this day (it’s still the “latest and greatest” non-Pro iPhone before the iPhone 16 releases in a few weeks) and you won’t get the by far biggest feature of a software update releasing just weeks/months after your purchase. This is a huge step backwards in terms of software support, as iPhones normally get pretty much all major new software features for at least 3 years, and still most features of even newer OS releases (recent devices have seen support for major updates for 6+ years, the iPhone XS will get its 7th major iOS release with iOS 18).

I’m not saying “cut that poor multi-trillion dollar company a break”, I’m just saying that not supporting the iPhone 15 for Apple Intelligence probably isn’t a result of malicious acting, but rather bad foresight and poor internal communication. Limiting the soon-to-be-released iPhone 16 models to 8 GB on the other hand seems very greedy, especially with them trying to run as many of their AI models on-device.

narc0tic_bird , 30 days ago

Many (most?) captchas I stumbled upon weren’t case sensitive.

narc0tic_bird , 30 days ago

What’s Apple Glance?

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

I’d pay for YouTube Premium Lite if it didn’t state “Note: Ads will still show on music content and outside of videos.” and if that’d make them stop harvesting all my data.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

I agree, once you factor in a power supply (or PoE hat), case and storage a Raspberry Pi really isn’t all that cheap anymore nowadays. Unless you have a project that specifically benefits from the GPIO pins or the form factor, just get a cheap barebones mini PC or a used one with RAM and SSD already included.

This will get you a system that’s way more powerful even if it’s a couple of years old (the Pi’s SoC is fairly weak) and I/O throughput is no contest, normally with at least a dozen PCIe lanes to use for NVMe storage or 10 gigabit network cards, if you so desire.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

Around 15 TB migrating to a new NAS.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

The article is from June 17th.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

I like Linux, but it can have security issues just as well.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

Hardly surprising considering that Brave, Vivaldi and Edge are all based on Chromium. The Brave and Vivaldi team won’t have the resources to maintain Manifest v2 support for each new Chromium version, and Microsoft doesn’t have any reason to support v2 with Edge outside of goodwill.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

Something is wrong with the Windows scheduler and these new chips. The Linux results aren’t revolutionary, but they’re about what you’d expect from what AMD marketed in terms of IPC uplift.

More reviewers should benchmark hardware on multiple operating systems.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

Yes, but even then the Phoronix results seem to suggest a larger gap in performance.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

Regarding 2.): Disable “Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views (requires restart)” under Settings > Interface in Steam. This should fix the hangs.

narc0tic_bird , 1 month ago

I’m waiting to see how DeepComputing’s RISC-V mainboard for the Framework turns out. I’m aware that this is very much a development platform and far from an actual end-user product, but if the price is right, I might jump in to experiment.